Walsall Comment: Jeff Bonser was hard to get close to

Here he gives his take on the shock departure of Jeff Bonser at Walsall...

During his near 30 years as chairman of Walsall Football Club Jeff Bonser has had an uneasy relationship with the club’s fans and the journalists covering the club’s affairs.

Supporters have always resented the £400,000 or so annual rent paid to the local businessman for the use of the Banks’ Stadium, believing he had made enough cash from his ownership of the Saddlers to allows some of it to go on building a successful team.

Reporters found it difficult to reach the Bescot boss when they had questions supporters wanted answers to, but at least he kept his promise that the club would never go bust while he was in charge.

In all my years covering Walsall for a range of local and national newspapers and agencies I never got close to Jeff Bonser who even once raged at me for a newspaper headline he must have known I hadn’t written.

Yet I feel some sympathy for the man who has overseen the club making regular – if small – profits year after year during his tenure.

In his time he has seen the club promoted and, for the first time reach a Wembley final in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy...in which they played poorly and lost to Bristol City.

He has helped keep league football in a town surrounded by the giants of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City, and it is sad that he goes after a nightmare season in which the team failed dismally on the pitch and were relegated to League 2 without a whimper.

Bonser has always insisted he was prepared to sell the club, but only to someone he felt had would have the club’s future at heart.

In 1991 he threatened to shut the club down rather than sell it on the cheap when mounting losses raised fears they would have to shut down. They were losing £8,000 a week.

Looking back on my career I have seen so many successful businessmen try, and usually fail, to make the Saddlers more than the Cinderella club of the West Midlands.

In this region, they are most football fans’ second favourite club.

It all started for me with former canal bargee Ernie Thomas in the boardroom hotseat, followed by wealthy Black Country businessmen Bill Harrison and his son Ron, then came the controversial scrap merchant Ken Wheldon who gained notoriety on the old Fellows Park terraces by trying to mastermind a ground sharing scheme with Wolves of Birmingham City.

Many felt that would have spelt the end of the Saddlers, but the plan was beaten by the supporters in the appropriately named SWAG – Save Walsall Action Group – led by local hero Barrie Blower, who eventually became chairman for a short spell.

And it was Blower who somehow managed to contact London financial whizz-kid Terry Ramsden and talk him into taking over the always ailing Saddlers, flying into town by helicopter and giving pensioner fans turkeys at Christmas.

Unfortunately, they came how to roost when he hit financial problems in his business and what had looked a dream team ended in disappointment.

Big-spending Ramsden’s determination for instant success had hit reality when the club made a record loss of £208,725, the bill for players’ salaries almost doubling from £377,871 to £656,268 and admin costs rocketing from £16,931 to £55,782.

The team even failed to qualify for the play-offs despite the new spend-spend regime.

When much-loved but crumbling Fellows Park was sold for £5.7 million to become a supermarket, hopes were raised that the new Bescot Stadium, planned to be built for less than £6 million, would be a turning point in the hard-up history of Walsall FC, but the project was overspent by £1.7 million and the poor old Saddlers found themselves in Division 4 and desperate for cash again rather than mixing with some of the country’s big clubs.

So here we go again. Another chairman with hope in his heart, and the dwindling number of fans desperate to see a bit of success, even if it can’t ever match the exploits of high-flying neighbours Wolves and Villa.

Jeff Bonser may not have been everyone’s cup of tea at Bescot, but at least Walsall have not suffered to fate of clubs like Notts County, Wrexham, Hartlepool, Stockport County, Barnet and Halifax who are all down in non league football, wondering where it all went wrong.

Let’s hope the new era for the club and those long-suffering fans will not experience yet another SOS – Save Our Saddlers!